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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29271450">Post-Blue</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kataclysmic/pseuds/Kataclysmic'>Kataclysmic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Lost</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Not Canon Compliant</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 03:26:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,417</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29271450</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kataclysmic/pseuds/Kataclysmic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The slow slide of his tongue against yours is all you can see of the future until his hand slips between you and reaches for the fly of your jeans and then you are blind to everything but the here and now.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Sawyer" Ford/Jack Shephard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Post-Blue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>--</p>
<p>You still find it hard to believe you're all home. Or back to civilisation, at least. You don't know where home is anymore; the island was harsh and unrelenting, nothing like a home, but now L.A. and the idea of 'home' don't feel synonymous in your mouth, like the world has shifted in your absence and left you on uneven footing now that you're back. </p>
<p>You've been back six days - six long days filled with mentally exhausting tasks: psych evaluations and medical check-ups and reunions with family members and friends who thought you long since dead. Your mother, Mark, Sarah – people that became nothing more than memories to you on the island are all thrilled that you're alive, and you wish you could find it inside yourself to respond in kind, but your eyes ache with fatigue, and every yawn you suppress catches in your throat until it feels as if your tongue is just a well of exhaustion.  </p>
<p>You miss the physical ache of a day's labour on the island, more preferable to you than the mentally tiring tasks you've been presented with all week. Still, exhausted as you are, you struggle to sleep. Your hotel suite is too quiet. The electric-buzz of civilisation cannot lull you to sleep like the roar of the ocean and the hooting of birds once did. You miss the warmth and life of a body next to you. You lay awake in a too-big bed in a too-clean room, and wish the bone-deep weariness would give way to sleep.</p>
<p>In truth, it isn't even the island that you long for. Just certain things about it, things that you are already beginning to crave. The community. The loud hush of night. Fresh-air. Sawyer.</p>
<p>It's odd that, you think. Missing Sawyer. Because out of everyone on the island, you never thought it would be Sawyer that you would grow to have feelings for. He is only three rooms away from you now, but it may as well be three states for all the good it'll do you. There is too much tension and exhaustion, too many questions for you to just go running to him, after everything. You had been experimented on - manipulated. The situations you and he had found yourselves in were the result of careful planning by unethical monsters. A social experiment performed on all of the survivors. Everyone was shocked, but none more so than yourself – for you, it wasn't just the button, the threat of the Others, it was him, as well.</p>
<p>When you were briefed on returning home, you'd been sitting two rows in front of Sawyer, but had felt his eyes burning into your neck throughout. At the end, you turned around and found resigned, almost sad eyes looking at you. An expression you weren't quite familiar enough with to know what it meant, but it tasted like goodbye, sour on your tongue and bitter in your belly.</p>
<p>You don't have a chance to speak to Sawyer alone after that.  Or rather, neither of you makes the chance.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p><i>There's been </i>something<i> bubbling under the surface for weeks. Long gazes and a prickly heat that washes over you every time he's near. And then there are the insults that sound more and more like innuendo with each passing day. It's like a striptease; tension spitting between you while you undress each other with your eyes, day after day, and now </i>this<i>. Pointless arguments just to.... You don't even know </i>why<i> you do it anymore, just that Sawyer, angry and pressing against you, makes you hotter than anything else these days.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>Sawyer has stalked you like a predator, has you cornered against a tree. You want to regain your ground, but he refuses to back down. If anything, he moves closer still, until you're mere inches apart. Everything that isn't him becomes a blur in the background; his eyes, his face, his lips, so very close to yours, are all you can – or care to - focus on.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“I ain't got your fuckin' antibiotics,” he tells you. His voice is thick and whiskey-rough, and he's so close that you can taste his breath on your tongue. You can't help but think how much you want to taste the rest of him. Your lips are dry, so it's not about seduction when your tongue slips out to whet them. His eyes drift from yours, down, for a second, before meeting your heavy gaze again.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>You murmur a retort, something suitably scathing you think - but you're not sure. The roar in your veins is echoing in your ears, and you're not sure if the insult even falls from your tongue, it feels so distant and strange.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>The long-time forgotten hiss of desire flares heavily within your belly. There have been encounters – flirtations and kisses – but nothing that burns quite as hotly as this. Sawyer growls slightly, and you dare to hope he's feeling this like you are. You know your taunt could not have been enough to piss him off to the point of growling, and maybe this heat is something that is threatening on the gulf of his consciousness too.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>His eyes burn hard into yours, searching for something. You don't know what to offer him, but your fear and grip on reality are fading fast and the tension between you thickens. It doesn't matter that you've wanted women all your life, it doesn't matter that he's the most arrogant prick you've ever had the displeasure to meet. His arms are pinned to either side of your shoulders, trapping you against the tree, and your breaths are coming in short, sharp gasps. You want him like you don't remember wanting any other. </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>The familiar rustle and crunch of life in the jungle echoes dimly through you as he shuffles forward, narrowing the tightening gap between your two bodies. You take this as a sign of acquiescence, or at the very least as an invitation. You inch your face closer to his, your gaze twitching from his darkening eyes to his maddeningly red lips. Your head tilts and his breath brushes your mouth again. You can barely stand this. </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>The second between your eyes finally flickering closed and his mouth brushing against yours seems to last an eternity. The wet quiver of his tongue against your lips is as abrupt as it is drawn out, and you are suddenly on each other. His lips are the slow gliding tremble of a promise against your mouth, and his kiss isn't at all how you would have ever imagined it; it is slow and delicious. His kiss draws out everything you've ever repressed about yourself until your arousal is centred in your cock and your mouth, and all you can think of is him – sun-warmed skin, blood-hot mouth, and the unfamiliar brush of stubble against your face that makes your cock twitch.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Everything about the way his mouth clings to yours, how his hands claw at your chest and cock and thighs, sings to you how desperate he is for this: his passion rivals your own. He tastes of old-sugar and smoke and the lost flavours of home. The slow slide of his tongue against yours is all you can see of the future until his hand slips between you and reaches for the fly of your jeans. Then you are blind to everything but the here and now.</i>
</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>You have to hand it to them: no expense has been spared putting the group up after the rescue. Fancy hotel, good service - if it wasn't for the fact that you're basically trapped within the confines of the resort, it'd be a free vacation. A well-earned rest after life on the island. Half of it has to be Oceanic trying to sweet-talk you out of suing, you think cynically, but there is definitely an official handle trying to stop your stories coming out before official word on the subject is released. </p>
<p>The press are going nuts, torn between your hotel and Washington, and the conspiracy theories are doing the rounds in all of the tabloids. The theories are outlandish as hell, and they're not even halfway close to the truth. The Government is keeping quiet, but the UN is demanding a full investigation of the project. You've heard conjecture that some groups want the Island bulldozed - everything dug up and ground down. You can't say, that after everything, you don't agree with them.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>
  <i>You wake to find yourself in a rudimentary medical facility, with a needle poised to inject something into your cephalic vein. Shouts and the heavy pounding of punches being thrown outside the room draw away your faceless captor and the needle is left forgotten by your side. You have no idea what's in there – you don't even remember how you ever got wherever the hell on the island you are – but you can guarantee it's nothing good.</i>
</p>
<p><i>Your captor never re-emerges, but moments later Sawyer busts into the room you're being held in, gun in hand and an armed troop behind him. At the sight of the men behind him you wonder if perhaps you weren't given something while you were knocked out, but the way Sawyer </i>looks<i> at you tells you this is no dream. There's something like concern and relief glimmering in those eyes, and his hand gives a quick squeeze to your arm as he sets about undoing your restraints.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>“Fuckin' Air Force has come to save us,” he tells you. “We're getting off this damn rock.”</i>
</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>When you sleep, you dream of him, of the island. Every dream is a memory: the hot impressions he left on your unconscious too stark to remain there, buried, and so they erupt every night, reminding you of him, the ocean, and the taste of salt and sand in your mouths.</p>
<p>He swept you up in a hysterical wave of desire, relentless at first, as if he thought that if he let you stop for reflection you'd turn tail and flee to Kate or Ana Lucia. You wanted to tell him that it was just him you wanted, but you weren't talking about <i>it</i> at that point. It was just blow-jobs and kisses amongst the undergrowth. Talking about it would have made it real, and by then, neither of you were ready to admit it to yourselves or anyone else. But denial could only carry you so far, and everywhere you went on the island – the beach, the jungle, the caves – everything was marked in your mind, like the heat that had engulfed you both had seared the very ground on which you had stood. Laid. Fucked.</p>
<p>Nothing about him was the way you'd imagined it to be (and now you're off the island, you can finally admit to yourself that you wanted him - fantasised about him - long before he ever touched you). You had imagined him to be wild, aggressive – and it isn't that you've got masochistic tendencies, but you'd half imagined him to be as violent with his cock and tongue as he was with his fists and voice. Instead, he was a seductive tease – not tender, but incredibly fucking sexy, drawing everything out until you lost control and finally begged him to fuck you.</p>
<p>On the island, you dreamt of your father. Nightmares of him and blood and failure. You woke up panicked, with silent screams tearing from your mouth. Everyone had their own nightmares to contend with, so no one ever noticed yours until Sawyer stopped slinking from your cave back to his tent in the middle of the night and remained by your side, holding you through the worst of your dreams, and calling you a pussy otherwise.</p>
<p>The cot you'd fashioned from the rock face was barely big enough for one man, let alone two, but by the time you'd won him over enough that he actually <i>wanted</i> to stay with you, he'd won you over so much that you didn't want him to leave. Ever.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>You wake up with a start. <i>4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42</i>, you think, before realising it's a pounding at the door waking you up, and not the shrill of the alarm. The digital display on the clock gleams out 02:19, and you roll over, throwing an arm over your face. Three times, members of the press have snuck up to your room, conning the hotel staff into thinking that they're family members. You're too tired to deal with this right now.</p>
<p>A minute later and the pounding at the door continues. "C'mon, Doc," drawls a familiar voice. "I know you're in there."</p>
<p>Recognising the voice, you're really tempted to go on ignoring it. For all the parts of you that just want to get lost in him, there is the nagging suspicion in your mind that these aren't your feelings, and his want for you is just a residual effect of <i>their</i> meddling in your lives. Had you not crashed, you know implicitly that you would never have wanted him. You can't say one for way or another what it was about the island that had drawn you together – whether it was of your own free will, or more manipulations. And you know, given the looks he has been sneaking your way on the occasions your paths have crossed, he is feeling the same thing. </p>
<p>"Y'know, there ain't a lock in this building I couldn't pick," Sawyer tells you from behind the door. "You may's well save me the trouble and open up."</p>
<p>"What do you want, Sawyer?" you yell toward the door. But you give in anyway, jump out of the too-soft bed, pull on a t-shirt, and open the door. </p>
<p>One look at his eyes, and you know exactly what Sawyer wants. Your heart rumbles in your chest, something inside your stomach coils up real tight. Fuck the reason; you want it too.</p>
<p>"Missed you," Sawyer growls in the instant before he presses his mouth into yours.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p><i>You stumble through the jungle, Sawyer's arm locked tightly around your waist. You're weak and drugged and would be on the floor if it weren't for his words of encouragement and support. It surprises you to no end, because since the two of you started – since </i>it<i> started - you've been trying to kid yourselves it means absolutely nothing.  But the way Sawyer looks at you when you lean on a tree to catch your breath, how his arm tightens around you when you trip over your own two feet, tells you it's more than blow-jobs and release and a way to pass the time. You think maybe you've known all along, but it's only once the island has stripped away every defence and repressed thought that you used to define yourself by that you can actually admit to any of this.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>Behind you, the Air Force Special Forces are surveying the area cautiously, aiming their weapons in the direction of every snap of twig and hoot of bird. You don't care, and want to tell them their caution is pointless. You've been here long enough to know that if They want you, then they will take you, no matter how careful you are.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“C'mon, Doc,” he urges you. The nickname is familiar, but his voice is tight, concerned.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>You squeeze the hand cupping your hip. You don't have the words, but you want to reassure him: it's going to be okay. You hope.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He fills you in on what's been happening in your four-day absence as you trek through the undergrowth. Your rescuers arrived the morning of your abduction by the Others, ready to return everybody to civilisation, but with little explanation as to how they'd found you. The transceivers and batteries had burnt out long ago, and the signal fire was long since abandoned.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Somebody knew we were here,” he tells you gruffly. “They won't say who, but kinda got the impression it's some Government branch or something. Whoever it is is gonna get a faceful of fist when I find 'em.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>You chuckle and it hurts your bruised ribs. What he's told you hasn't really sunk in yet. You think it'll be a couple of days before you properly process anything. Except -</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“If they've been here three days, why didn't you get out of here?”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Except he came for you. </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He shrugs, and looks away uncomfortably. If he wasn't helping hold you up, you think he'd be striding off ahead by now, refusing to answer. His lips tighten, but he answers, “Figured you'd patched me up enough times that I owed ya one.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>It's a lie, you realise immediately, but you don't mind because the truth is acknowledged in the way he touches you, looks at you, and asks if you're okay at every stumble and hitch of breath.</i>
</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Sawyer tastes different, of old things - whiskey, toothpaste, nicotine, but underneath he still smells jungle damp and of hot sand. You don't know which you prefer, but beneath it everything, it's Sawyer in your arms and on your mouth and grinding hard against you, and that's enough.</p>
<p>"Don't care what they did to us or made us do out there," Sawyer whispers against your mouth. "I still want you." </p>
<p>Something in Sawyer’s words shoots straight through you, and you buck against him, feeling his dick pressing hard against your own through a layer of denim. Something hot and tight wriggles through you, and you struggle for words, thought, breath.</p>
<p>Sawyer had never been one for grand romantic gestures; insults and name-calling had been his preferred form of sweet-talk. His honesty is all very new, but the gravelly-graze of his voice against your lips is something familiar. The way he says your name, like he's forgotten everything but you, makes your insides jerk.</p>
<p>You pull him against you and drag him into the room. The door has barely slammed shut before you're pressing him up against it, running your hands possessively over his body as you crush yourself into him.  It's a brutal and devastating sort of kiss – screwing with your heart as much as it is your body, and when you finally part, gasping for air, the look in his eyes startles you a little. You're not used to seeing anybody with such a look of need in their eyes, and to see him so unguarded sends a little dart of pleasure through you.</p>
<p>Sawyer leans forward, pressing his forehead against your own, and a smile creeps along your mouth, unbidden. He smiles slightly in response. You're so close that you barely see it, but the tickle of his breath against your lips tells you it's there.</p>
<p>Restlessly, you run your hand through his hair, and then slide it along his neck, shoulder, arm, until you meet his hand and grip it tightly in your own. His thumb runs across your wrist, and you inhale sharply, the soft swipe of the pad of his thumb across your pulse-point doing maddening things to the rest of you. It's less and more than the kiss, saying something that your mouths can't.</p>
<p>“You're lookin' pleased 'bout somethin', Doc,” he says, and he's closer now, so close that his lips brush yours in a pale imitation of a kiss as he speaks.</p>
<p>You guess if the expression on your face is anything like the stupid, half-grin he's got plastered across his own face then yes, you must look pretty pleased. “Yeah, I am,” you reply slowly, too absorbed in the way he's looking at you, the way his thumb is still brushing your wrist, and the way his other hand is creeping along your hip to realise exactly how pleased. Or why. </p>
<p>The niggling doubt that this isn't what either of you want is completely gone. It was easy to think that before, back when your kisses and touches were contained by sand and sea and jungle, but now you're grounded in the real world, and your want feels as real here as it ever did on the island. In the last six months, your body has never <i>not</i> been humming for him; the low buzz of arousal constantly thrummed through your veins whenever he was around, and surging hotly when he touched you. But this – this is something else entirely. It's visceral and needy and <i>good</i>, and you don't want him to ever stop touching you. The look in his eye as he leans in to kiss you again, tells you he's not likely to any time soon.</p>
<p>-- end.</p>
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